High Precision Timing with Parabolic Equation Fitting in Narrowband Systems †

Timing forms the basis of wireless communication systems. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology has strict requirements for synchronization performance, and timing errors lead to interference between subcarriers and symbols. Although cyclic prefix (CP) can relax the timing requirement, high precision timing is still necessary and can release the pressure on CP. Due to the uncertainty of signal arrival, there is a sampling offset between the sampling sample’s timing and the real timing, which can be large in the narrowband system with a low sampling rate. In this paper, we propose a parabolic equation fitting method to improve the timing precision in narrowband systems that have two times the rate of the Nyquist sampling rate. The proposed timing method is easy to implement, with low additional complexity compared to traditional timing detection and is based on traditional direct correlator output.